My Teaching Philosophy

Teaching is guiding students to learning. It is facilitating their learning; helping them to understand what learning is; why they learn; and how they learn. It’s showing them how toanalyze a problem and go about solving it. It’s showing them how to think for themselves.

Learning is what students do. It is the introduction to their brains of new material, in the form of concepts and facts. It is the creation of synapses in their brain; creating new knowledge by linking existing knowledge to new information. It is the understanding of this new material and how to use it. Of course, teachers should also be learning new teaching strategies, new content material, and new information about their students.

The current use of the word “technology” implies electronic, digital technology. Specifically for the 21st century classroom and learning environment, technology is any of these tools that teachers and students use to enhance the teaching and learning experience by way of providing opportunities for student creativity, collaboration, critical thinking, problem solving and decision making.

Technology integration is the systematic merging of digital technology into the teaching and learning process. It is not the use of technology for its own sake; rather, it is to take advantage of the attributes of digital technology in order to increase opportunities for students to interact with their teachers, classmates, and the world outside the classroom.

Teachers can help students become interested in a subject by linking it to familiar technology.

Technology can help students relate to others outside the classroom, and to be able to access more information and communicate/collaborate with more people than they otherwise could without digital technology.